Interesting Books (200+)


In addition to the "essential" development studies books, some other interesting books include (organized chronologically):


Pre1950s

On the Genealogy of Morality (1887) Nietzsche

Growing up in New Guinea (1930) Mead


1950s

Black Skin, While Masks (1952) Fanon


1960s

The Fire Next Time (1962) Baldwin

Arabia Felix (1964) Hansen 

Stokely Speaks (1965) Kwame Ture

State and Land in Ethiopian History (1966) Pankhurst

Ethico-Religious Concepts in the Qur'an (1966) Izutsu

Teaching as Subversive Activity (1969) Postman and Weingartner

The Liberation of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde (1969) Davidson 


1970s

Xala (1974) Ousmane

The Green Book (1975) Gaddafi

Resistance and Decolonization (1977) Cabral

I Write What I Like (1978) Steve Biko


1980s

Tanzania: A Political Economy (1982) Coulson

Stranglehold on Africa (1983) Dumont and Mottin

The Intimate Enemy (1983) Nandy

Rural Vulnerability fo Famine in Ethiopia (1986) Wolde Mariam

The Myth of Arab Piracy in the Gulf (1986) Al Qasimi

Introducing Liberation Theology (1986) Boff and Boff

Adjustment with a Human Face (1987) Cornia, Jolly and Steward


1990s

Domination and The Arts of Resistance (1990) Scott

King of the Castle (1990) Eaton

How Can Man Die Better (1990) Pogrund

A History of Modern Ethiopia (1991) Bahru Zewde

Unthinking Social Science (1991) Wallerstein

From Dictatorship to Democracy (1993) Sharp

We Have Never Been Modern (1993) Latour

Fictions of Feminist Ethnography (1994) Visweswaran

People of the Plow (1995) McCann

Democracy and Development in Africa (1995) Ake

Civil Society: Challenging Western Models (1996) Hann & Dunn

Slaves into Workers (1996) Sikainga

Only the Paranoid Survive (1996) Grove

The Lie of the Land (1996) Leach and Mearns

The Art of the Impossible (1997) Havel

The Seed is Mine (1997) Onselen

Capitalism in the Age of Globalization (1997) Amin

The Power of Babel (1998) Mazrui and Mazrui

Civil Society and the Aid Industry (1998) Van Rooy

Classifications of Knowledge (1998) Bakar

Envisioning Power (1999) Wolf

Men in the Sun (1999) Kanafani

The Dignity of Man (1999) Kamali

Fiqh of Zakah (1999) Al Qaradawi

Nonviolent Social Movements (1999) Zunes, Kurtz and Asher

Civil Wars in Africa (1999) Ali and Matthews


2000s

Empire (2000) Hardt and Negri

Poverty and Charity in Medieval Islam (2000) Sabra

Home and Exile (2000) Achebe

Confronting Empire (2000) Ahmad

Colonial Effects (2001) Massad

Human Rights (2002) Makua

Regarding the Pain of Others (2003) Sontag

Formations of the Secular (2003) Asad

World-systems Analysis (2004) Wallerstein

Precarious Life (2004) Butler

The Liberal Virus (2004) Amin

Postcolonial Melancholia (2004) Gilroy

Good Muslim, Bad Muslim (2004) Mamdani

The World Bank and Struggles for Social Justice in the Age of Globalization (2005) Goldman

Polio: An American Story (2005) Oshinsky

Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law (2005) Anghie

Equity and Fairness in Islam (2005) Kamali

The Collapse of Globalism (2005) Saul

A Radical History of Development Studies (2005) Kothari

How Trade Can Promote Development (2005) Stiglitz and Charlton

Medical Apartheid (2006) Washington

The Ghost Map (2006) Johnson

God's Unruly Friends (2006) Karamustafa

The Siege of Mecca (2007) Trofimov

Bad Samaritans (2007) Chang

Ho Chi Minh (2007) Bello

Everyday Politics of the World Economy (2007) Hobson and Seabrooke

Hunting Causes and Using Them (2007) Cartwright

Decent into Chaos (2008) Rashid

Travesty in Haiti (2008) Schwartz

Charity in Islamic Societies (2008) Singer

Indigenous Methodologies (2009) Kovach

Field Notes on Democracy (2009) Roy

The Fourth Political Theory (2009) Dugin

Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom (2009) Taiaiake

An African Renaissance (2009) Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Life After Violence: A People's Story of Burundi (2009) Uvin


2010s

The Politics of Military and Humanitarian Interventions (2010) Fassin & Pandolfi

The Power of Positive Deviance (2010) Pascale, Sternin and Sternin

Citizen Action and National Policy Reform (2010) Gaventa & McGee

Thomas Pogge and His Critics (2010) Jaggar

Adventures in Aidland (2011) Mosse (Ed)

Selected Works (2011) Ho Chi Minh

Steve Biko (2011) Wilson

Philosophy and African Development (2011) Keita

Ending the Crisis of Capitalism (2011) Amin

Readings in Methodology (2011) Ouedraogo and Cardoso

The Politics of Ethnicity in Ethiopia (2011) Aalen

Why Civil Resistance Works (2011) Chenoweth and Stephan

Dancing in the Glory of Monsters (2011) Stearns

Yemen and the Politics of Permanent Crisis (2011) Phillips

Labor and Legality (2011) Gomberg-Munoz

Pox: An American History (2011) Willrich

How Migration Shaped Our World and Will Define Our Future (2011) Goldin, Cameron and Balarajan

Seasonality, Rural Livelihoods and Development (2012) Devereux, Sabates-Wheeler and Longhurst

Interventions (2012) Kofi Annan

Define and Rule (2012) Mamdani

Re-defining Food Security for the 21st Century (2012) Gibson

Q-Squared (2013) Shaffer

Small State, Big Politics (2013) Kamrava

Claim No Easy Victories (2013) Manji and Fletcher

Nasser (2013) Nasser

Global Social Policy in the Making (2013) Deacon

Education in Afghanistan (2013) Baiza

The Battle for Afghanistan (2013) Dalrymple

Thomas Sankara (2014) Harsch

Toxic Aid (2014) Edwards

What Is An American Muslim? (2014) An-Na'im

Zero to One (2014) Thiel

Debtfare States and the Poverty Industry (2014) Soederberg

Chris Hani (2014) MacMillan

Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat (2014) Charles River

Organizing Women Workers in the Informal Economy (2013) Kabeer, Sudarshan and Milward

American, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes (2014) Gopal

The Quest for Socialist Utopia (2014) Bahru

American Slavery & Capitalism (2014) Baptist

Patrice Lamumba (2014) Nzongola-Ntalaja

Islamic Education, Embodied Knowledge and History in West Africa (2014) Ware

Capitalism vs the Climate (2014) Klein (and How Change Happens)

Anatomy of Giving (2015) Dwyer

Arab Development Denied (2015) Kadri

Team of Teams (2015) McChrystal

The Silk Roads (2015) Frankopan

Frantz Fanon (2015) Lee

Death in the Congo (2015) Gerard and Kuklick

Blueprint for Revolution (2015) Popovic

There is No Such Thing as a Free Gift (2015) McGoey

Blinded by Humanity (2015) Barber

Human Rights and the Food Sovereignty Movement (2015) Claeys

Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few (2015) Reich

Sustainable Livelihoods and Rural Development (2015) Scoones

Between the World and Me (2015) Coates

Can Non-Europeans Think? (2015) Dabashi

Originals: How Non-conformists Move the World (2016) Grant

Two Arabs, A Berber and a Jew (2016) Rosen

Nobody (2016) Hill

The Global Majlis (2016) Al-Kawari

Ken Saro-Wiwa (2016) Doron and Falola

Secure the Base (2016) Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Ebola: How a People's Science Helped End an Epidemic (2016) Richards

Lessons Learned from Canada's War in Afghanistan (2016) Saideman

Poverty and the Millennium Development Goals (2016) Cimadamore, Koehler and Pogge

How Philanthropy Fails to Alleviate Poverty (2016) Kohl-Arenas

Innovation and its Enemies (2016) Juma

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (2016) Scully

May Our People Triumph (2016) Lumumba

The World's Emergency Room (2016) VanRooyen

Who Really Feeds the World? (2016) Shiva

Rules for Revolutionaries (2016) Bond and Exley

The Self-Help Myth (2016) Kohl-Arenas

The Politics of Development in Morocco (2017) Bergh

How One Small Town Banned Pesticides (2017) Ackerman-Leist

Radical Transformative Leadership (2017) Sharma

Agroecology (2017) Rosset and Altieri

Shariah Law Q&A (2017) Kamali

The Qur'an and the Just Society (2017) Harvey

The Development Dance (2017) Swedlund

The Horn of Africa (2017) Clapham

Ali Shariati and the Future of Social Theory (2017) Byrd and Miri

Why Don't the Poor Rise Up? (2017) Truscello and Nangwaya

Drawdown (2017) Hawken

Against Colonization and Rural Resistance (2017) Kapoor

A Socialist Peace? (2017) McGovern

The Doha Experiment (2017) Wasserman

The Untold Story of a Medical Disaster in Colonial Africa (2017) Lachenal

War in 140 Characters (2017) Patrikarakos

Collapse of a Country (2017) Coghlan

Julius Nyerere (2017) Bjerk

Revolution and Authoritarianism in North Africa (2017) Volpi

Making Sense of the Syrian Revolution (2017) Saleh

No Is Not Enough (2017) Klein

Redefining Success (2017) Hoang et al

Democracy in Chains (2017) MacLean

Children and Environmental Toxins (2018) Landriagan and Landriagan

Navigation by Judgment (2018) Honig

21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018) Harari

Land, Landlessness and Poverty in Ethiopia (2018) Rahmato

Measuring Tomorrow (2018) Laurent

Globalists (2018) Slobodian

Shaykh Ahmadou Bamba (2018) Kimball

The Tyranny of Metrics (2018) Muller

Critical Development Studies (2018) Veltmeyer and Wise

The Gulf Crisis (2018) Miller

Decolonising the University (2018) Bhambra, Gebrial and Nisancioglu

How Democracies Die (2018) Levitsky and Ziblatt

Mass Starvation (2018) De Waal

The Postcolonial African State in Transition (2018) Niang

Who Are You and Why Are You Here? (2018) Claessens

Participatory Development Practice (2018) Kelly and Westoby

Factfulness (2018) Rosling

The Lies that Bind (2018) Appiah

Getting to Zero (2018) Walsh and Johnson

Secular Translations (2018) Asad

Cooking Data (2018) Biruk

Amilcar Cabral (2019) Mendy

Food Aid in Sudan (2018) Jaspars

Dissident Knowledge in Higher Education (2018) Spooner and McNinch

The Perfect Nine (2018) Ngugi

Knowledge and Global Power (2019) Collyer, Connell, Maia and Morrell

People, Power, and Profits (2019) Stiglitz

Lomathinda (2019) Lipenga

Warriors in a Time of Sacrifice (2019) Sandoval

The Triumph of Injustice (2019) Saez and Zucman

Teach for Arabia (2019) Vora

Worldmaking after Empire (2019) Adom

Measuring What Counts (2019) Stiglitz, Fitoussi and Durand

Globalisation and Seed Sovereignty (2019) Walshe

Poisoner in Chief (2019) Kinzer

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (2019) Zuboff

Evaluation Landscape in Africa (2019) Mapitsa, Tirivanhu and Pophiwa


2020s

Who Owns the Problem? (2020) Adesanmi

Numbers Don't Lie (2020) Smil

The Art of Emergency (2020) Ndaliko and Andreson

Rural Democracy (2020) Harding

Fields of Gold (2020) Fairbairn

Beginning with Heidegger (2020) Millerman

Imagining Afghanistan (2020) Manchanda

Mozambique's Samora Machel (2020) Isaacman and Isaacman

The Asian Aspiration (2020) Mills et al

Know the Beginning Well (2020) Amoako

Social Dictatorships (2020) Eibl

China's Gilded Age (2020) Ang

Changing Qatar (2020) Harkness

Another Now (2020) Varoufakis

Ebola and the Ravages of History (2020) Farmer

Ethiopia in the Wake of Political Reform (2020) Desta, Dori, Mihrertu

The Data Detective (2021) Harford

The Power of Geography (2021) Marshall

Kwame Nkrumah (2021) Ahlman

The Life of a Reluctant Nationalist (2021) Tomas

The Afghanistan File (2021) Turki Al Faisal

The Idea of Development in Africa (2021) Decker & McMahon

The Theory of a Multipolar World (2021) Dugin

The Great Awakening (2021) Dugin

The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen (2021) Colley

The New Age of Empire (2021) Andrews

Decolonizing Politics (2021) Shilliam

The Future of Africa (2021) Cilliers

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster (2021) Gates

The Economic Weapon (2022) Mulder

Gambling on Development (2022) Dercon

Against Decolonization (2022) Taiwo

Edible Economics (2022) Chang

Cobalt Red (2022) Kara

Price War$ (2022) Russell

When McKinsey Comes to Town (2022) Bogdanich & Forsythe

Political Power and Environmental Sustainability in Gulf Monarchies (2022) Zumbraegel

Power in the Age of AI (2023) Scharre

Nationalisation and Labour Market Policies in Saudi Arabia (2023) Al Fozan

Explaining Success in Africa (2023) Hern

New Military Strategies in the Gulf (2023) Samaan

How Big Things Get Done (2023) Flyvbjerg & Gardner

The Fourth Turning is Here (2023) Howe

Age of Revolutions (2024) Zakaria

Brave New Words (2024) Khan


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